Kukla's Korner Hockey

Entries with the tag: ziggy palffy

Former NHLer and Slovak national team forward Zigmund Palffy has called it quits, announcing his retirement from hockey.

"One morning is more beautiful than the previous one, and you have other opinions. At this point, I believe that I quit. Definitive. Already I do not want to travel anywhere. Did it enough," said the 41-year-old winger.

Palffy hung up his skates after the 2012/2013 season where he was the most productive player in Slovak Extraliga Tipsport, registering 83 points in just 48 games.

When last the National Hockey League saw Ziggy Palffy he had two shoulders that were in rough shape.

The rehab basically took him out of commission in 2006, given nobody wanted to sign him after the six months he was on the shelf. And at that point in his career, after being one of the game’s most exciting goal scorers, he didn’t want to play for a paltry $1 million US, saying yesterday: “I can do that in Slovakia.”

So he did. And after playing in the ‘06 world championship he retired from the national team, not so much because of any great hassle with the management or coaching staff, but rather to move out of the way to let the younger players take over.

“But there aren’t any younger guys coming,” he said, worried a little about the state of hockey in his country. “They don’t want to work. They all want to come over here and play junior and I think it’s much better for them to stay home, play in the senior league, play in Russia and in Sweden and get better before they try over here.

“It’s too tough to try to make it over here so young and these guys don’t realize it. I tell them when I can but it doesn’t work out for most of them and we’re not developing younger guys because of that.”